Calgary’s mayor Naheed Nenshi tweets daily. He is even the focus of a new film, @nenshi4mayor, about the role social media played in his election.

Nenshi was also the first Muslim elected mayor in Canada.

When I won the election… suddenly I became nationally and in fact internationally famous, I found myself on CNN and Time magazine and Al-Jazeera because of how I look and the faith of my family… but in Calgary, indeed in western Canada, that was never an issue during the election. No one cared, they wanted to know what I was gonna do with public transit.

Nenshi pointed out the people of Calgary weren’t interested in his skin color or faith.

As mayor, he railed against excessive spending of the preceding administration. He makes himself accessible to his consituants by phone, Twitter and Facebook.

“I read a lot about civic issues, I was part of a group who was trying get citizens more engaged and I spend a lot of my time trying to convince other people that they should run for public office because we need better people in public office — and here I am,” he said.

Liz Leslie is a journalist based in Bloomington, Indiana. As an associate Web producer for WFIU, Liz maintains the Muslim Voices Twitter and Facebook as well as writes for the blog. She also contributes to Earth Eats.More posts by this author »